Ahead of the next day’s event, ‘Inside Track: How to make it as a City attorney,’ Mayer Brown senior accomplice Sarah Rochelle explains what commercial consciousness means
As a senior partner in Mayer Brown’s actual property team, Sarah Rochelle is busy. Last week, while she wasn’t assisting in putting together cloth for a consumer pitch, attending meetings with customers, operating on some of the transactions, and attending the firm’s summer birthday celebration, Rochelle changed into darting between vac scheme meet-and-greets, tasks aimed toward tackling boundaries going through lady attorneys, and, of course, speakme to the Legal Cheek Careers team ahead of the following day’s panel occasion, ‘Inside Track: How to make it as a City attorney.’ “And that is a quiet week,” Rochelle says, checking her calendar.
As an actual property legal professional, Rochelle oversees numerous asset tasks without delay, many of that have international traders placed in varying time zones. Much to her leisure, those offers often involve landmarks visible from the City’s skyline — Mayer Brown, for instance, acts for the proprietors of The Shard and suggests the purchase of the so-referred to as ‘Walkie-Talkie’ and the sale of the ‘Cheesegrater’ homes.
Despite dealing with very bricks-and-mortar matters daily, Rochelle began by studying English literature. Knowing she would later convert to regulation, the then University of Exeter undergrad selected to learn something she “simply enjoyed.” Still, her undergrad experience analyzing and distilling massive volumes into easy factors proved beneficial to a transactional attorney’s record-heavy responsibilities.
After completing the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and Legal Practice Course (LPC) at BPP University Law School, Rochelle started a schooling agreement at Jeffrey Green Russell (now Ince Gordon Dadds). A medium-sized company based totally in London’s West End. Rotating between the firm’s litigation, corporate, and real estate groups, the budding trainee soon became attracted to transactional over contentious paintings.
Rochelle states that in litigation, the parties input it with opposite goals. By assessment, events to a transaction normally begin with the identical aim: final the deal. Plus, litigation can be a long recreation, as Rochelle explains:
“In a few cases, litigation can pass on for years — you can run on fewer matters. However, they’ll pass on for a while. Whereas maximum transactional topics could have a shorter time frame.”
Rochelle qualified into the actual estate, which, even though the sector changed into nonetheless reeling from the monetary disaster that had rocked the financial system, became in step with her previous actual property paralegal ling revel in after-regulation faculty.
Shortly after qualifying, Rochelle moved to the international mega-company Dentons. After Dentons, Rochelle moved to international outfit Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) earlier than eventually arriving at Mayer Brown ultimate yr. Although no longer a way of bodily distance — with the corporations all situated within London’s City district — every circulation amounted to an extensive career bounce matched by exposure to increasingly bigger projects. At Dentons, Rochelle was seconded to a multinational hospitality employer Hilton. At HSF, she labored at the Thames Tideway tunnel, higher referred to as London’s ‘top notch-sewer,’ which, in 2015, was the biggest infrastructure assignment in Europe.
Much to her enjoyment, Mayer Brown’s near-knit workplace tradition offers legal professionals more arms-on duty to manage incoming trainees and run on the company’s social mobility initiatives. Rochelle has also experienced first-hand how crew length impacts your work. The firm’s smaller trainee intake and condensed group size approach extra possibilities for talented legal professionals to be visible.
Involved in the company’s excursion scheme interview method, Rochelle regularly asks applicants: “What is industrial cognizance, and how do you stay commercially aware?” According to Rochelle:
“Here we’re checking out not only recognition of cutting-edge deals, transactions, and problems within the commercial enterprise international but also information of the enterprise surroundings and the operational grid under which enterprise is carried out on each day foundation. A hit legal professional needs to be capable of putting into attitude how their legal advice will affect commerce’s workings around the arena in fashionable and for their purchaser especially. The flexibility to conform to industrial acumen is prime to achieving a City attorney at a top firm.”
For any aspiring City lawyer hoping to electrify, amplify your research past the apparent. “At the moment, you could tell humans have brushed upon on Brexit as they assume they’ll be quizzed in this,” Rochelle famous. Despite the predicted effect that Brexit may additionally have on the United Kingdom’s markets, different news gadgets can also impact the financial system. She factors into HS2, for example.
Sarah Rochelle may be speakme alongside attorneys from Baker McKenzie, Hogan Lovells, PRIME (Linklaters), and BPP University Law School at ‘Inside Track: How to grow to be a City lawyer’ tomorrow (Wednesday, 10 July) at BPP University Law School in Holborn, imperative London. You can practice attending our very last London event before the give-up of the July schooling settlement closing date.
